1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to the copying, replicating or cloning of the stored contents of a memory, and more particularly, to improving the boot sequence of a computer clone.
2. Description of the Related Art
In many modern computer networks, new computers are added to the network by replicating or cloning existing computers within the network. Since many of the computers within a network have similar hardware and contain identical files and software, the contents of computer memory can be copied from a first computer to a second computer where the second computer becomes a clone of the first computer. Ideally, the second computer should operate in the same manner as the first computer. However, in computers that use an operating system that boots from multiple devices such as the UNIX operating system, the boot sequence of the cloned machine must be manually modified to enable the operating system to identify and utilize devices connected to the second computer. Typically, the copy of the operating system located on the second computer is identical to the operating system on the first computer. Consequently, the device identification and location information within the second computer that is used by the operating system still identifies the devices within the first computer (i.e., the device directory of the original and copy are identical). As such, the operating system will not boot properly since pointers and links to the devices will point to devices in or coupled to the wrong computer. This situation is compounded when the devices (including device files) are located on storage such as disk groups that are remotely located from the computer. Consequently, the present solution to this problem is to copy the operating system to the second computer, then manually alter the files and devices used by the kernel to hard code the correct paths in the file system to the new location of the devices. Such a manual process is tedious and time consuming.
Therefore, a need exists in the art for an improved method and apparatus used in cloning a computer to improve the boot sequence of the computer clone.